My shitty morning

This morning, I:

• Realized I'd left the book I bought last night in Tony's car, which is my fault.  But when I tried to call him, for the first time ever, got his answering machine.
• Tried to check into tomorrow's flight on West Jet and got jerked around by the web site, constantly getting conflicting information.  A simple web site outage would have been disappointing; that was infuriating.  I still don't know if I'm checked in.
• Had the worst taxi ride of my life.  Here's how you know your taxi driver sucks--he sits for a five count once the light has turned green and cars have passed him.  The guy was argumentative, slow, and took an absurd route to my two-mile destination.  Thank Christ I had the sense not to tip him.  My parting words to him were "Fuck off."
• Because I was flustered and running late, I missed that Tony had tried to bring my book to the train station.  (What a mensch.)
• Found a large, obnoxious party jamming up the boarding of the train.
• Once uderway, I bought breakfast at the dining car and tried to mellow out.  Once settled back in my seat, I discovered I'd failed to get a spoon and had to march back to the dining car for one.
• I started playing on-line poker and hit a royal flush, the best hand possible.  I've played thousands of games and never even seen a royal flush before, and this morning I got one.  Then shortly after that, I got disconnected from the game and lost.
• In Everett, Washington, the train picked up three, cap-wearing douchebags who've sat across the aisle from me.  They showed up with a case of Coors Light in the train; it was 8:30 am.  Now I get to hear their fat-girl jokes and crying-stripper stories. 

Douchebags on a train, the right-most one being the douchiest.

And I have yet to go through Canadian customs.

Update:  Douchebag #1 cracks his first Coors at 9:52 am.

Update #2:  I guess I jinxed myself with my Canadian customs comment, because naturally, I got pulled aside coming through customs, even though I'm a Canadian permanent resident, have a Canadian driver's license, and a Canadian health card.

I'm now mellowing out at Lisa and Elana's.

A Tale of Two Days in My City

Wednesday was only the second sunny day we've had in 2011.  Fortunately, Nicole and I had the good sense to take time to appreciate it on my lunch break.  We went to the top of Signal Hill and enjoyed the view.

It was good that we enjoyed that beautiful Wednesday, because this was Thursday.

Over a foot of snow fell on Thursday.

 The cold wasn't so bad, but getting around was a scary proposition.  St. John's is full of steep hills that don't make for great driving conditions when covered in snow.  In fact, on Thursday, a snow plow plowed into two cars parked on my street (which is very steep). 

When I moved here, my transportation plan for the winter was to live in downtown and have practically everything we need within walking distance (check!) and take the bus to work (no check).  For several months now, the bus drivers have been on strike.  And while I'm sympathetic to the union, I can't help but feel like they've overplayed their hand.  The strike's going on this long has trained people to get along without them and perhaps demonstrated that they're not that valuable.  Drivers, cut a deal and get back to work!

But back to the snow--I had the good fortune of putting my Firebird in storage before all of it hit.  But the guy storing it lives just out of town at an elevation even higher than Signal Hill, so there was some snow at his place.  When I got out, here's what I saw.

My size-12 boot print among the moose prints.

Moose prints.  First, I was impressed with the sight of them, how smooth and round their edges were and how nearly symmetrical they were.  Then once the mechanic confirmed it, I was impressed that I had correctly identified them in the first place.  

The snow's still lingering for now, though fortunately, it's not falling like it was on Thursday.  And really the cold's not bad either.  Now that things have settled down, I'm enjoying it.

 

A Great Time in Toronto

So after visiting Nicole's parents in Midland, we went down to Toronto for a few days.  While living in the city was a bit of a grind, we had a great time, simply hanging out there and visiting friends.

First we went to our favorite Toronto bar, the Communist's Daughter, to hang out with our favorite bartender, Michael Louis Johnson.

The Communist's Daughter, which was once Narare' Snack Bar

There, as always, we got into an interesting discussion, during which I met a visiting journalist Michael DiGregorio.  DiGregorio was there to write about the death of a local bicyclist and cycling in the city in general, a subject near and dear to my heart.  So we had a fascinating conversation.  He told me about a recent documentary, Scapper, he did which I'd also love to see.  Here's the trailer for it.


The next day, Nicole and I bounced around Queen Street West during the day and saw "Fair Game" at the Bloor that night.

On our last day in Toronto, we were able visit with several of our friends--John and Ann, Derek and Linda--as we had a delicious meal at le Papillion.  Linda's brother, Jed, was there, and later our friend Michelle joined us at Derek's house.  Here's a typical segment of our goings-on there:


As is always the case with such visits, we didn't get to see everyone we would have liked.  So if we missed you, we hope to catch you next time.  And we found that, refreshingly, Toronto is a much easier city to visit than it is to live in. 

This time off has been good; contrary to my intentions, I haven't touched my worked since Christmas Eve.  But tomorrow, I go back to work, and I'm looking forward to it.